Monday, November 19, 2007

Hula hula hula

My trip to Hawaii was off to a quick start when I landed and learned that I had an event to attend an hour and a half after landing. My main reason for going to Hawaii was to support Aaron's AMA campaign. So my first 48 hours was filled with AMA event, which I must say, were surprisingly fun.

After all of the campaign hoopla ended, I took to relaxing to the max on the beach. I bought some amazing tanning "lotion" called maui babe at the local gift store. I call it "lotion," because it is actually two types of oil and coffee extract mixed together. While Aaron and I layed on the beach, we developed the routine of the slathering this stuff on, laying there until we were too hot to take it anymore(usually 30-45 minutes) and then frolicking in the ocean until sufficiently cooled off. After the 3rd or 4th round of this, we discovered a way to put our arms at the bottom of the ocean and hole ourselves there like doing a push up with our legs floating behind us. This became the way that we tanned our backs and only had to be out of the water and in the intense sun to tan our fronts. I would recommend maui babe to anyone that wants to get an intense tan in a very short amount of time.

There was also a lot of good eating while on the trip. Mostly seafood, but we did also eat at a great Korean BBQ. I am sure I have never consumed so much ahi in my life, and it was all delicious. One day on the way back from lunch on the beach(a brief hiatus from tanning) we were walking down some steps when an Asian tourist stopped Aaron and I. She had a disposable camera and said something about a picture. With a good 2 minute confusion and us repeatedly agreeing to take her picture, we finally figured out that she wanted a picture of US! Maybe we looked like celebrities, or we will be photo shopped on some foreign porn site, or maybe she just wanted to show the people back home the white people she saw, we posed and let her take our picture.

The interesting thing about Hawaii is that there were 3 things that I saw everywhere...Coach stores(like the bag), Starbucks and ABC stores(like a general convenience/souvenir store). There was an ABC in the shopping center of our hotel and the lady that ran the cash registered remembered Aaron from Day 2 on. When he went to check out one day, she said "Aloha" and not realizing it, responded "Hola." We had a good laugh about it.

I think one of the best parts is that unless I told them, no one figured out that I wasa) not a med student orb) part of the AMA.